nothing, he is virtuous: No, my lord, my humble duty remembered, I will not be your suitor. I say to you I desire deliverance from these officers, being upon hasty employment in the King’s affairs._” “_You speak_,” replies the Chief Justice, “_as having power to do wrong._”—His whole behaviour to the Chief Justice, whom he despairs of winning by flattery, is singularly insolent; and the reader will remember many instances of his insolence to others: Nor are his manners always free from the taint of vulgar society;—“_This is the right fencing grace, my lord_,” says he to the Chief Justice, with great impropriety of manners, “_tap for tap, and so part fair_”: “_Now the lord lighten thee,_” is the reflection of the Chief Justice, “_thou art a very great fool._”—Such a character as I have here described, strengthened with that vigour, force, and alacrity of mind, of which he is possessed, must have spread terror and dismay thro’ the ignorant, the timid, the modest, and the weak: Yet is he however, when occasion requires, capable of much accommodation and flattery;—and in order to obtain the protection and patronage of the great, so convenient to his vices and his poverty, he was put under the daily necessity of practising and improving these arts; a baseness which he compensates to himself, like other unprincipled men, by an increase of insolence towards his inferiors.—There is also a natural activity about _Falstaff_ which, for want of proper employment, shews itself in a kind of swell or bustle, which seems to correspond with his bulk, as if his mind had inflated his body, and demanded a habitation of no less circumference: Thus conditioned he rolls (in the language of _Ossian_) like a _Whale of Ocean_, scattering the smaller fry; but affording, in his turn, noble contention to _Hal_ and _Poins_; who, to keep up the allusion, I may be allowed on this occasion to compare to the Thresher and the Sword-fish. To this part of _Falstaff_’s character, many things which he does and says, and which appear unaccountably natural, are to be referred. We are next to see him _from within_: And here we shall behold him most villainously unprincipled and debauched; possessing indeed the same Courage and ability, yet stained with numerous vices, unsuited not only to his primary qualities, but to his age, corpulency, rank, and profession;—reduced by these vices to a state of dependence, yet resolutely bent to indulge them at any price. These vices have been already enumerated; they are many, and become still more intolerable by an excess of unfeeling insolence on one hand, and of base accommodation on the other.